


welcome to the family

by beautifullights



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Badass Finn, Competent Finn, Gen, Injured Poe Dameron, M/M, Meet the Father, Protective Finn, RebelFinnSunday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 02:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6935539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifullights/pseuds/beautifullights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Kes,” Finn says again, hearing the eerie distance in his voice. “You haven’t heard from Poe in three years.”</p><p>Kes leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “No. Why?”</p><p>“<em>Fuck.</em> How—” Finn swallows. “How much do you know about what happened during that time?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	welcome to the family

**Author's Note:**

> Happy #RebelFinnSunday! 
> 
> I’m glad to have an excuse to bring this one-shot into the light of day. It appeared in my head a few weeks ago (at 5:30am, as per usual, demanding that I listen to it instead of sleeping, because who needs sleep? clearly not me). 
> 
> Takes place in the canon ‘verse, more or less, after some unidentified bad thing happened to Poe. Because, you know. Reasons. 
> 
> (#poehurtssopretty reasons) (also BAMF Finn reasons) (let’s just say: all the good reasons.)

Finn stops short just before reentering Poe’s room. A stranger sits by Poe’s bed, head bowed over Poe’s still form. He’s not dressed in Resistance fatigues, nor in any uniform he recognized, nor in medbay scrubs. “Hey!” Finn snaps, crossing the threshold into Poe’s room. “Who are—” Finn stops short as the man looks back over his shoulder at Finn. Dark curly hair, heavily streaked with silver. Long-stubbed nose. Sharp-planed jawline. “Are you—” Finn stares. “You’re Poe’s father. Sergeant Dameron, sir.”

“Retired. Just Kes. You can lose the ‘sir.’ But yes, I am. You’re—” Kes’ sharp eyes track up and down Finn’s grease-stained fatigues. “You’re one of Poe’s pilots?”

Finn smiles. “Yeah. Um. I guess. That, too. I’m also his boyfriend.” He crosses to the man, hand outstretched. “Lieutenant Finn, sir. Kes.”

Kes blinks for a moment, nonplussed, before shaking Finn’s hand. “You don’t have to—look, I know my son. You don’t have to ‘boyfriend’ me.”

“Don’t have to— _what?”_

Kes snorts. “The ‘boyfriend’ thing. I know how my son works. Look, I don’t mean it’s a bad thing! Far from it. It’s who he is. I was the same, until I met his mother. So was she, until she met me. So. You might say he comes by it honestly.”

As the wires connect in Finn’s brain, he slowly loses his smile. “If you’re trying to say that Poe—”

“I said, it’s not a bad thing! It’s what pilots do. I’m glad that’s his choice, rather than drinking or gambling. I just meant that you don’t have to pretend you two are something you’re not.”

“We are,” Finn replies, very cold.

Kes gives him a tight, close-lipped smile. “Ok.” He turns back to Poe.

Wait. _Wait._ That means— “So Poe—hasn’t even told you about me?”

“Of course not. I haven’t gotten a single comm from him since he joined the Resistance, three years ago.”

Finn tilts his head, bemused. “Why not?”

Kes gives him another incredulous look. “Because the Resistance doesn’t have secure enough lines for anyone to go comming home. Don’t you know that? I assume you haven’t been sneaking off to send your family any unauthorized comms.”

“I don’t have a family.”

“Oh.” Kes looks back over his shoulder at Finn. “I’m sorry.”

Finn shrugs. “It’s ok—” Poe stirs suddenly—or, stirs as much as he can, which is just a larger sigh and a slight shake of his head. His eyes don’t open, though.

Kes straightens with a start. He reaches to sweep Poe’s hair off his forehead—Finn darts forward and knocks his hand aside. “Don’t!” he hisses. “Careful.”

“Let me touch my damn son!”

“Not like that. Don’t you—” Finn stops short. “Kes,” he says again, hearing the eerie distance in his voice. “You haven’t heard from Poe in three years.”

Kes leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “No. Why?”

“ _Fuck_.” Finn stares down at the older man. “How—” He swallows. “How much do you know about what happened, during that time?”

Kes holds his eyes. “I know that the Resistance took down Starkiller, after it destroyed the Hosnian System.”

“Right.” Finn’s face collapses into a helpless grin. “The Resistance. You—you don’t even know who fired the final shots to that fucker, do you?”

Kes blinks at him. His face slowly kindles with a fierce light. “ _Really?”_ He looks down at Poe, takes one of his son’s hands in his. “ _Mijo_. I hoped you were part of the team, but—oh, _mijo_. So you finally are the best pilot in the galaxy, like you dreamed.”

Finn grins. “He certainly is. But.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out. “So.”

Kes looks up at him, wary.

“There are some other things you should probably know,” Finn says at last. “Let’s, um.” He looks down at Poe, gut twinging again at the sight of him lying there—so still, so sunken. “Let’s let Poe sleep some more. Want to come for a walk with me?”

Kes’ fingers tap against each other for a moment. “I’m not going to like this conversation, am I,” he says at last.

“No,” Finn answers. “You’re not.”

“Huh.” Kes presses his lips together, sighs, pushes to his feet. “Ok, then. Let’s go.” He touches Poe’s hand one more time, then turns to the door. “Lead on, Lieutenant Finn.”

“Just Finn, please.”

“Don’t you have a first name?”

“That is my first name.”

“Oh.” Kes ponders this as Finn asks a meddroid to keep an eye on Poe until they get back. “Why don’t you have a last name?” he asks, as they continue down the hall to the back entrance.

“Right,” Finn says. “So. I’ll get to that.” Outside, the air is cool and misty. Fog still clings to the trees, giving the forest an air of comfortable mystery.

“Are you planning to get to it any time soon?” Kes asks at last.

“So.” Finn takes a deep breath and stops. He can’t focus on this and walking at the same time. He looks at Kes for a moment, unsure where to start. “Um,” he tries.

“Look,” Kes says. “Whatever happened, Poe survived, thank the Force. So please, just spit it out.”

“General Organa sent Poe to Jakku to pick up a map that was supposed to lead to Luke Skywalker,” Finn starts. “But.” Finn’s hands clench at his sides. “The First Order arrived. Stormed the village. Disabled his ship. Um.” He swallows. “Took him captive.”

Kes tenses. “But—but he was rescued. Obviously. So—”

“No,” Finn interrupts. “He was undercover. Disavowed. The Resistance and the Republic weren’t supposed to engage against the First Order. They didn’t even know he’d been captured, but even if they had, they wouldn’t have been able to come after him.”

Kes’ eyes widen. When Finn pauses, he waves a tense hand. “Go on!”

“Right. So. They.” Deep breath. “They tortured him.”

Nothing, _nothing_ in this world could ever have prepared Kes for those words. Beat his son up, shot at his son—horrible, but more or less expected. _Tortured?_ Kesblinks rapidly. It takes him a moment to realize that his knuckles are pressed against his mouth, holding in Force knows what kind of howl or vomit or cry of horror.

“They didn’t have—” Kes manages at last. ”I mean, it’s illegal, so—they wouldn’t have had an interrogation droid, or anything.”

Finn’s silent.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Kes whispers. His body caves in on itself. He scrubs at his hair with shaking hands. With a shock, Finn recognizes the gesture from Poe. “Did he—did he—”

“He held out.”

Kes’ face cracks into a feral grin. “Of course he did. And he—he escaped?”

“Um,” Finn says. “Yes. But. Before that. Uh.”

“Report, soldier.”

“Right. So. After four days, they gave up, and—”

“Four—” Kes covers his eyes with his hands, pale and nauseated. “My son spent four days in a room with an interrogation droid,” he rasps.

Finn clears his throat. “Yeah.”

Slowly and carefully, Kes walks to one of the trees and leans his head against it. After a moment, his shoulders start shaking.

“Kes,” Finn says. He walks up behind the man, puts a tentative hand on his shoulder. Kes isn’t crying, but—from the drowning look in his eyes, he might as well be.

“Four—” Kes starts. “ _Four—_ ” He closes his eyes and drags in a long breath. “Then what?” he asks, hoarse.

Finn gives the man a moment to breathe before he continues. “Have you heard of Kylo Ren?” he asks.

Kes looks at Finn, wary. “Yes.”

“How much do you know about him?” Finn asks.

“That he’s a Darksider. That he killed the Jedi younglings and padawans and destroyed the school. That he’s very powerful with the Force. There was a rumor that he could even go inside people’s minds and—” Kes stops, eyes very wide. He stares at Finn. Finn stares back. “No,” Kes says.

Finn nods. His own eyes are starting to burn.

“No!” Kes says again. “ _No._ He—no!” He covers his face with his hands and leans against the tree. “ _Poe_ ,” he whispers. “ _Mijo_. Oh _, mijo_.” He’s silent for a long time, shoulders shaking, hands trembling.

Finn waits, arms wrapped around his chest, not thinking about the way the light had gone out of Poe’s eyes by the time he broke him out of his cell. Not thinking about it. _Not thinking about it._

When Kes turns back to Finn at last, his eyes are rimmed with red, his face slick with tears. “So. He broke, then.”

“No one could have held out against Ren,” Finn snaps. “Not without the Force.”

“I know that, Finn. But that’s not how he’d see it.”

“No.” Finn slumps. “He didn’t. Not at first, at least. It took him a while to get there.”

Kes nods, eyes distant. “So,” he says at last. “If I were the First Order, I would kill him at that point. Thank fuck, they didn’t. So what happened? How did he get out?”

“Right,” Finn straightens again. “Well. That’s where I come in. I was a Stormtrooper.”

Kes levels a pair of steely grey eyes. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“No, sir. Kes. I’m not.”

“My son is fucking a Stormtrooper?” Kes shouts. “After all the trouble we went through to kill them all?”

Finn’s hands clench into fists. “First of all,” he growls, “he is not just _'fucking’_ me. He is my _boyfriend_. That clear yet? Second,” he continues, not waiting for an answer, “instead of trying to kill them all, maybe you could have had some compassion. Not to mention respect. I never chose to be a Stormtrooper. None of us did, in the First Order. We were stolen from our families when we were tiny children. Trained and conditioned to be loyal killers for the First Order.”

He takes a deep breath. “Jakku was my first mission. We were told to kill civilians. Massacre them. Every single villager. I refused to shoot. So they sent me to reconditioning. Fortunately, it didn’t take. I pretended it did so they’d let me go. And then I went to break your your son out. He needed me to get him to a ship. I needed him to fly me out. So we escaped together in a TIE-fighter, and took out some of their cannons along the way.” Still one of his proudest memories.

Finn pauses. Kes is staring at him, wide-eyed, utterly nonplussed. “And then we got shot down and crash-landed on Jakku,” Finn ends in a rush, embarrassed as ever at having been too distracted by the conversation to notice that last cannon-shot. “We got separated in the crash—we both thought the other was dead—but we each made our way back to the Resistance in the end. And then Starkiller happened. And then life has been—well. It’s the Resistance. Life has been absolutely nuts. And dangerous. And wonderful.”

Kes is still staring at him. “You saved his life.”

“Yeah.”

Kes nods, slow and shaky. “Th—thank you. Thank you, I—thank you. _Thank you._ ” He rubs a hand over his hair again, as though trying to pull himself together. “But you could have just—just run, at that point. Once you were out of the First Order. Why did you join the Resistance?”

“Well,” Finn shrugs. “At first it was just to find my friend. Someone I met on the way off of Jakku—Rey, the new Jedi. I don’t know if you’ve met her yet.”

Kes shakes his head.

Finn smirks. “I’ll introduce you before you leave, then. She’s incredible. Just, you know. Stay on her good side.” He flashes Kes a crooked grin, then continues. “And then—well. I stayed for a lot of reasons. Partly because the Resistance took me in and gave me a home. Patched me up again, saved my life. Partly because of Poe.” Finn can’t help smiling at the memory. “I, uh. Got wounded pretty badly on Starkiller. He was there for me when I was recovering. We got to know each other. Started to get closer. Got together a few months later. So that was, uh. Good incentive to stay along.” The smile spreads into a full grin.

“But—but most of all, I stayed because I wanted to fight for something I believed in.” His shoulders straighten unconsciously. “You don’t—Kes. You can’t _possibly_ know how much it means to me to—to finally be able to make choices. Think for myself. Fight for leaders I respect. And fight for a cause that I know is _right_.”

Kes nods slowly. “You’re right,” he says. “I can’t. I’m—huh.” He shakes his head. “I’m not sure I really want to know what the First Order does to its troopers to keep them in line, but—I’m glad that whatever it is, you escaped it. I’m—yeah.” Kes looks Finn up and down. “I think the Resistance is lucky to have you.”

Finn shrugs, trying to repress a grin. “Hope so.”

Kes is still staring.

Finn resists the urge to shift from foot to foot. It’s difficult. Finally he raises a brow. “What?”

“Starkiller went down two years ago.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been with Poe ever since?”

“Yeah.”

“Continuously.”

“Yeah,” Finn repeats, irritated.

“Huh,” Kes says. He’s still staring at Finn, but—finally he grins and holds out a hand. “Welcome to the family,” he says.

Finn blinks. “What?” He takes Kes’ hand and shakes it, dazed.

“Like I said,” Kes says, “I know my son. When he was still with the Republic, we talked every week. He’s never stayed with the same person for more than a few weeks. You know that, right?”

“I do.”

“So. I’m sorry I assumed you were the latest line of code. If he’s still with you, it’s because he loves you.”

“He does,” Finn replies, holding Kes’ gaze. “And I love him.”

Kes smiles, eyes over-bright. “Good.” He clears his throat, repeats it. “Good. I’m glad. I—” He dashes a hand across his face. “It’s about damn time,” he mutters, starting to smile. “About damn fucking time.”

With absolutely no warning, Finn finds himself pinned to the tree by the throat, one very angry Dameron male hissing up into his face. “But if you hurt him, I swear by the Force I will hunt you down and take you apart limb by limb and feed you to a swarm of piranha beetles. Is that very clear?”

Finn could, of course, break Kes’ hold. He’s got a good forty pounds of muscle, at least an inch, and thirty fewer years than the man. But he’s learned, by now, that this type of threat is traditional in many humanoid cultures. So he just sighs, looks down at the fiery ex-Rebel, and nods. “Clear, Sergeant Dameron, sir.”

“Nerfherder,” Kes says fondly. He drops Finn from the tree and folds him into a fierce embrace. “You’ll have to tell me more about yourself, one of these days. You seem like a man worth keeping. But now, I need to get back to my boy before he wakes up alone.” He starts back down the path towards the base. Finn follows.

Halfway to the base, Kes stops short. “Four days,” he says. His voice shakes.

“Yeah.” Finn swallows.

“When I went to touch his forehead,” Kes says, still facing away from Finn. He mimics the gesture in the air in front of him. “It’s—like a Jedi move, I guess. That’s what Ren does?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Kes’ shoulders hunch inwards for a moment. “So. Poe. Doesn’t like that?”

“He sometimes gets panic attacks from it. And a couple of other triggers—holding his wrists. Needles.”

Kes shudders.

“Not very often anymore,” Finn adds. “He worked damn hard to get over it.”

“Course he did.”

“But he still gets them sometimes. Especially when he’s sick or stressed or tired.”

“Like now.”

“Yeah,” Finn nods. “Like now. I wasn’t sure if he was fully awake yet, but I didn’t want to take the chance.”

“Right.” Kes continues down the path, silent. “Glad he’s got you on his six, son,” he says at last.

Finn grins.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and concrits always appreciated! Tell me how I can be a better writer. Also, come say hi on [tumblr!](http://beautifullights1.tumblr.com/)


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